Auction Fever

Auction house and appraisers since 1962, Doyle New York (once an antiques gallery) is a great resource for vintage high fashion in these recessionary times. Yes, you heard me—there are deals to be had here. If you are lucky enough to follow its auction calendar, you might come across incredible couture like Chanel dresses from 1930 or a floor-length mint-green ostrich Balenciaga opera coat, once owned by a chic Parisian Marquesa. Prices for original French couture clothes from bygone eras start at bargain-basement and go up (up meaning $42,000 for an ombré blue silk fringe Chanel dress and boa from 1926, sold to an important collection.) The house also auctions objects for the home. The summer Doyle at Home sales are one of the best ways to stock up on very good quality furniture and decoration, paintings, and carpets for a song. You can bid via telephone or online. At a sale in June, I found Baccarat hurricane lamps for $250 each; and two giant Empire-style mahogany mirrors that cost $550. Notice I said Empire-style. Original Empire would run into the thousands of dollars. “Our focus is to bring big estate properties to the client,” said senior vice president Louis Webre, who, like yours truly, remembers the estate sale of Bette Davis in April 1990 (my first experience with Doyle). There in the corner of the galleries was the detritus of the screen legend’s life, assembled from her last apartment in Los Angeles. Webre and I recalled the matched set of well-worn American Tourister luggage— four bags with with the monogram BD—that came in a lot with assorted garment bags; the whole lot was sold for $850. What really stood out were eleven small Patrick Kelly dresses. When Davis had grown thin from a long battle with cancer, the African-American designer, who shook up Paris ready-to-wear in the eighties with his giant-scale buttons on jersey dresses, dressed her for appearances on late-night television. “Those were teeny-weeny dresses, size 0,” Webre remembered as he looked up the fashion inventory from that sale, which included Ungaro, Valentino, YSL, and, of course, Hollywood designer Nolan Miller. A box of her soft eyelashes fetched $2,000, but the highest price of $21,000 went to a drawing, signed by costume designer Edith Head, depicting Bette Davis in the fur-trimmed satin dress she wore when she uttered her famous “Fasten your seatbelts” line in All About Eve.

Celebrity auctions are the big draw here. Rex Harrison had dozens of cashmere sweaters with suede elbow patches. Rock Hudson’s Steinway baby grand was sold in August 1987. At Carrie Donovan’s sale of May 2002, yours truly bought two pairs of her giant TV-frame tortoiseshell eyeglasses (just for the memory!), which are now headed to the new Savannah College of Art and Design costume collection. No, I didn’t acquire them to recycle them for my own use. It was the one thing I bid on. (I usually do all my bidding via telephone with Jill Bowers, head of bidding services.) Joe Eula’s sale in November 2006 was a blockbuster for his beautiful illustrations, many of which he kept hanging in his homes until his death. His famous sketch of Chanel in her uniform suit and hat, in profile, went for $2,500, while a great one of Loulou de la Falaise went for almost nothing. And his great pencil drawing of Jackie Onassis being fitted by Halston in a long cashmere sweater ensemble to the floor got a big price, and I recently saw it in Ralph Rucci’s private office, housed on a windowsill, framed by heliotrope satin drapes. First-rate modern photographs byfs Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton, and Robert Mapplethorpe come up for auction in the semi-annual photography sale sale every spring and fall. Doyle at Home auction: July 15 Annual end of summer furniture/decor sale: August 19 The estate of Beverly Sills from her Beresford apartment, including opera-memorabilia auction: October 7